Media
Podcasts, books, and documentaries for readers who want to go further.
Podcasts
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The Black Gate
NPR follows one Uyghur family through detention and separation, reported over years. Pair it with Throughline’s companion history episode, Five Fingers Crush the Land.
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WEghur Stories
The first podcast made entirely about the Uyghur diaspora: art, language, food, music, and everyday life in exile, told by Uyghurs themselves.
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Xinjiang Sanctions
Professor James Cockayne interviews the people building the legal response to forced labor: how sanctions and import bans actually work, and where they fall short.
Books
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Waiting to Be Arrested at Night — Tahir Hamut Izgil
A leading Uyghur poet’s account of the crackdown closing in on his family, and their escape. If you read one book on this subject, read this one.
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A Stone Is Most Precious Where It Belongs — Gulchehra Hoja
The Radio Free Asia journalist on her childhood in Urumqi, her work in exile, and the price her family paid for it: twenty four relatives disappeared in a single night.
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In the Camps — Darren Byler
A concise, meticulous account of the camp system and the surveillance technology behind it, by one of the leading scholars of Uyghur society.
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The War on the Uyghurs — Sean R. Roberts
How the global war on terror gave Beijing the vocabulary for its campaign. The essential scholarly background to the present crisis.
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No Escape — Nury Turkel
Born in a re-education camp, the first Uyghur to earn an American law degree combines his own story with the case for accountability.
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The Backstreets — Perhat Tursun
A modernist novel of alienation in Urumqi, the first Uyghur novel translated into English. Its author was sentenced to sixteen years in prison while it was being prepared for publication.
Documentaries
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China Undercover
Undercover footage and survivor testimony on the camps and the surveillance state. A clear, careful introduction, freely available on the Frontline website.
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All Static & Noise
Survivors and families risk everything to document the camps, following Jewher Ilham, daughter of the imprisoned scholar Ilham Tohti, and the linguist Abduweli Ayup.
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Undercover: Inside China’s Digital Gulag
Robin Barnwell’s undercover investigation was among the first films to bring cameras close to the camps and the checkpoint state around them.